Page 10 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

“I’m here on orders from the Var. We’re here looking for war heroes that might share information on The Ocean’s War with the State—give us an edge against the Mystics.”

The crowd around Cal, which had been snickering and exchanging commentary, fell silent.

“The war had no heroes,” Lethe replied as if answering for them all. It was a common saying, mostly meaning that there were no praiseworthy heroics in the war.

“So I’ve heard, from everyone in the last town and the town before that. I’ve sacrificed time back at the State for this. It’s been almost two years in the State since I left.”

“Then you messed up.” Lethe removed a pocketknife from his belt. He knelt, slicing Cal’s bonds.

“But why? The State protects En Sanctus from being overrun by the Mystics. We’re the world’s best chance at peace. We’re on your side. Unlike them, we want to fight The Eating—Ouch!”

Lethe whipped the rope off, hard and fast, jerking Cal forward before muttering hurriedly, “Watch your mouth around these people, kid,” and then louder, “Dawson, get this Statesboy a seat.”

Cal recoiled from the rope burn but said nothing else.

“You’ll leave in the morning,” Lethe added.

Someone pulled him up, shoving him toward a bench near the fire. He looked around reluctantly before someone else, in a gentler manner, invited him to sit.

Jamie hurried up to Lethe, offering him a drink. He took it.

She peered past him as he took a sip and then circled him so she could watch Cal. A woman placed a plate in Cal’s hands, patting his shoulder.

Someone poured oil on the fire. It rocketed up toward the sky, transforming men and women into shadows hovering around it.

“Fire and wine, she lights my soul! A heavy spear on cupid’s bow!” a group of people on the other side of the fire sang, each with a sloshing mug in hand. “I’d give the world to make her mine—trade gold for fire and wine!”

Lethe dropped onto the bench next to Cal. Cal rolled the Atlas in his hands, and Lethe watched it as the glass bent the rolling light of the flames. “Put that thing away. It’s depressing.”

Cal obeyed, taking the mug from Lethe after returning the Atlas to his belt.

“I’m sorry I was reckless,” Cal said. “I wasn’t thinking I was putting anyone in danger.”

Lethe resisted the urge to say something sarcastic. He was just a boy, about the same age as the ones Lethe helped train.

Lethe could feel Cal studying him, kind of hoping he wouldn’t ask questions.

After several minutes, Lethe eventually lost himself to the wonder of the fire. He could make out faces inside it, layers of expressions changing like flashes of lightning. He felt a strange calm and felt his soul dipping into a cool pond of melancholy. He took another drink. He sank deeper.

“What’s that?” Cal said.

Lethe dropped the mug away from his lips to see Cal staring at his left forearm.

He tilted the mug in his hand, exposing his wrist before pulling back the sleeve of his shirt.

“It’s called a Dear Anne,” Lethe said, exposing the list of seventeen names tattooed on his forearm, framed in intricate designs that wound up to his shoulder and neck.

“A Dear Anne,” Cal whispered, and then his eyes widened. “You were a Rider of Saint East? A war—”

Lethe put his finger to his lips.

Cal lowered his voice. “But the Riders guarded Saint East. Your group sheltered thousands of people from the Strike. If there were heroes, then of all of them—we read about Saint East,” he said, and then inspected the ledger on Lethe’s arm.

“If I remember, Dear Anne’s were a lifelong commitment to serve and protect the people you were assigned to. ”

“Depending on which version of the Riders you joined. You forget we weren’t so friendly when the Strike’s rise forced us underground,” Lethe said, watching as Cal examined the scars burned through all but one name.

He smirked at Cal’s childish enthusiasm, like a boy at the zoo watching a poisonous snake through the glass.

When the world had been all but completely subjugated by the Strike, many had worshiped them. The decision of the ROSE to fight back was not only radical; to many, it was sacrilege. Branded as a cult, the ROSE had lived in hiding in the mountains, but that was the cleanest version of the story.

The truth was, the first wave of the ROSE that had protected the sanctuaries in the East were often revered. Those who had killed the Strike, however, were now seen as being as dark and vile as the Strike themselves.

Lethe couldn’t blame them. He scared himself sometimes.

It had taken a monster to eat a monster, and as it often was with eating, Lethe felt like the Strike were a part of him somehow, woven through his blood.

He was not part of the first stage of the ROSE.

The names tattooed on his arm were not people he swore to guard.

It was an entirely different kind of commitment.

“You fulfilled almost all of the commitments. One left?” Cal’s eyes flickered back and forth from Lethe’s face to his arm.

“Which version of the riders did you join? The good version or the cult version?” He leaned closer to the tattoo, uncomfortably close, as if he wanted to smell it.

“The tattoo design framing the names is really interesting,” he whispered, following the design to where it stopped near Lethe’s sleeve and then reeling back as if he realized how close he just was.

It didn’t deter him. “Does it go all the way over the shoulder—oh, it’s on your neck?

All the way up there?” He leaned forward again, but Lethe gave him a deterring look.

Still staring at Lethe’s neck, all he said then was, “Wow.”

Cal pointed back to Lethe’s arm as if asking for permission, and Lethe obliged him by crossing his arm over his lap.

“Ivan Prince.” Cal hesitated as he read the last name that hadn’t been scarred through. He leaned back into his seat and said nothing for a while. “Is it true that a Dear Anne is a lifelong commitment?”

“Slave to the grave,” Lethe replied.

“And are you still a Rider of Saint East?”

Lethe finished his drink. “To the grave,” he whispered.

Cal said nothing for a while and then among the singing and clamor, he whispered, “You know, I recently went to a traveling circus out in the State,” he said.

“I met a woman there. A kind you just can’t forget, even with all the stuff at the circus.

It’s said that she knows everything.” He waited.

“She had skin as dark as oil, with pale hair. Black eyes and a vest with these big, bright silver buttons. Too big, and the light kept hitting them.”

Lethe’s eyes narrowed. He set his mug down as he felt a withdrawal deep inside his chest. He looked at Cal, the boy with fire-lit eyes like the devil prepared to make a deal.

“She called herself Evira Beaumont, an En Sanctan survivor of the war, and rumor is, she’s an expert at knowing how to find people. She can find anyone.”

Lethe lowered his head, taking another drink before whispering, “Who sent you here?”

“I’ve been just going from town to town.” Cal hesitated, eyes lifting as if searching back into his thoughts.

“You leave in the morning,” Lethe said.

“But—”

“Morning,” Lethe demanded.

Cal dropped his head as if scorned. He didn’t speak again.

Lethe removed his flask, mixing the alcohol inside with a tablet from his belt. He poured the rest of his drink from his mug into the flask and shook it up.

He took a sip and then offered it to Cal, whose curiosity had drawn his attention back again. “You want to try it?”

Cal looked at the flask and then at Lethe as if sensing his mood. He took it into his hands and took a sip.

He hissed and spat, thrusting the flask back into Lethe’s hand.

Lethe took it, a smirk on his face. “I’m surprised you’ve lived this long.”

Cal gagged, leaning over the log. “Ugh—oh, that is terrible! What—ugh—is that?”

“It’s a concentrated version of what we Riders called Snake Bite. It’s a mutation suppressant. Blocks Madness in the system. Dulls the effects of mutations, but it will make your head spin.”

The ROSE had been quite skilled at crafting useful tonics to use to their advantage.

Snake Bite had been a failed attempt to dull a Strike’s powers.

When that hadn’t worked, the ROSE had concocted a tonic called Amnesia to cause their human worshippers to forget Strike existed at all.

Both tonics had been crafted using the roots of mutated plants, and their utilization had come at significant cost.

The concentration of Snake Bite that Lethe took would kill him if not for his own inborn healing mutation to balance out the effects.

Cal kept coughing.

Lethe exhaled. Cal had made him extremely restless. It seemed like tonight was just going to be one of those nights.

He stood up, tucking the flask away. He moved back toward the table, grabbing a bottle before popping in another Snake Bite tablet. Cal was still coughing when he left, a bit too distracted to ask questions. No one else did either.

Shaking the bottle up, Lethe hopped on his horse, leaving Cal and the others behind. He rode into the dark, back to the burn site of the hideout they’d discovered. He could still feel mild heat drifting from the pit.

He pulled the cork back out of the bottle, tossing it into the fire as he took a swig.

He hopped off his horse, removing its saddle and allowing it to graze before wandering around the pit. He circled it once, twice, drinking as he did.

“Fire and wine,” he mumbled, grabbing a cigarette from his pocket.

He chanted lowly, pressing it into a pile of ashes and lighting it on the coals before fixing it in the corner of his mouth.

Wrestling a board from the edge, he tossed it into the middle.

“A heavy spear on cupid’s bow.” He tossed in a lick of his drink.

The fire hissed. He threw in a nearby branch.